UPMC partners with Florida company to develop cancer medicines

UPMC is partnering with a Florida pharmaceutical company to build a manufacturing center in Oakland to create novel medicines that could be a new way to treat cancer and other diseases.

The Pittsburgh health care system is collaborating with PharmaLogic Holdings Corp. to develop radiopharmaceuticals, an emerging field in health care wherein small amounts of radioactive agents are used to treat and diagnose a growing number of conditions.

The medicines have a short shelf life, and thus can’t be shipped around the world. The radioactive agents decay quickly so they have to be used close to where they’re made.

Patients have to travel to facilities housing the medicines for treatment.

“If you think about these agents coming on the market, these novel things that will be available in a couple of years — you have a patient who has a condition that wasn’t treatable or had a worse prognosis but they don’t have access to treatment” said Alfred L’Altrelli, senior director of pharmacy at UPMC. “This gets ahead of that rush and hopefully means a miraculous change for patients.”

PharmaLogic will manage and co-fund the facility. UPMC will be the anchor clinical customer and provide strategic, research and operational support in a market expected to grow at double-digit rates through the end of the decade.

The center is expected to employ 30 to 40 people and be completed by late 2025 or early 2026. UPMC officials said the facility will be among the largest in the country. It will contain cyclotrons, a particle accelerator, which uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, used to produce radioisotopes for the drugs.

“It is a privilege for PharmaLogic to participate in this partnership with UPMC, which will provide patients and clinicians with first-in-line access to novel radiopharmaceuticals,” said Scott Holbrook, chief strategy officer and general manager for PharmaLogic. “The establishment of this partnership marks a significant milestone for our organization toward achieving the goal of collaborating with leading health care institutions. Given the expertise and reputation of UPMC, this facility will serve as a center of excellence globally for years to come.”

The radiopharmaceuticals market was valued at $5.2 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to $9.75 billion by 2030, according to Vantage Market Research.

L’Altrelli said the vision is for the technology to spread.

“We don’t want to just keep this at UPMC if there’s an ability to benefit other patients,” he said. “Pharmalogic has a footprint throughout North America. So we can translate the developments we make here somewhere else.

Privately held Pharmalogic was founded in 1993 and employs about 650.